Banders keep tabs on third-largest pelican colony

Pelican banding is a dusty, messy business. Data collected at the Marsh Lake helps keep tabs on one of the three largest colonies in North America, which reached 19,400 nesting pairs at its peak.

John Wollenberg demonstrates how to put a leg band on a pelican at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton on <137>Friday, <137>July 18.(Photo: <137>Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com<252><137>)

Story Highlights

Marsh Lake has one of the largest populations of nesting pelicans in North America

The population peaked in 2006 with about 19,400 nesting pairs.

With 40 continuous years of banding data, Marsh Lake has the most complete data set of any colony

Banding started in 1972 with a St. Cloud State University prof, continued with one of his students

The biting began as soon as someone reached into the pile, took hold of a leg and started working the numbered aluminum band into a flush circle with a pair of pliers.

About 2 ½ hours and 364 bands later, the nine-person crew was scratched, bleeding, louse-bitten and dusted in the trampled excrement of thousands of pelicans. And inexplicably cheerful.

"There are a lot of people who really like pelicans for whatever reason, and I think it's people who see them flying in formation," said Jeff DiMatteo, a St. Cloud State University grad who took over the banding effort in 2001.

"It is pretty cool. They really are graceful fliers. Not so graceful walking on the ground. But when you see them flying by, you don't get any hints of vomit, of lice or anything like that. You just see this big, majestic-looking bird. Yeah, they're cool."

Fully grown, American white pelicans' wingspans can reach 9 ½ feet. Even at a flightless 6 weeks, the chicks on Marsh Lake's Eight-Acre Island were about the size of a Christmas goose.

Move too fast, DiMatteo warned the crew, including four Minnesota Department of Natural Resources interns and three experienced banders, and they'll panic and trample each other to death. Move too slow, and they'll scuttle away to freedom in Marsh Lake.

One of the largest pelican colonies in North America, Marsh Lake lies two hours west of St. Cloud, within the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area. The pelicans nest on small islands and a peninsula within the shallow, 5,000-acre lake.

Jeff DiMatteo leds a group of volunteers to band the birds annually.
St. Cloud Times

Third-largest colony

At its peak in 2006, Marsh Lake supported 19,400 breeding pairs.

Two years ago, the colony was the largest in North America. Today, it's No. 3 with about 10,000 breeding pairs, down from about 11,500 pairs last year.

Only North Dakota's Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge and South Dakota's Bitter Lake have larger populations.

Tommy King, a Mississippi-based research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife Research Center, said 50-plus known colonies exist in North America. Most of those nest in the Northern Great Plains.

Marsh Lake usually keeps the pelicans — and cormorants, herons, egrets and gulls — isolated from predators and other disturbances, including people. In one colony west of the Continental

Divide, King said a single boat visit caused pelicans to abandon an island.

DiMatteo, who first banded Marsh Lake pelicans in 1987, worries that the combined stress from predators plus more visits from researchers will cause the birds to vacate. On a 2011 visit to Currey Island, he heard a croaking call, similar to what was described just before the pelicans abandoned the Chase Lake colony in 2004.

The first coyote turned up at Marsh Lake in 2012. It caused birds to abandon the peninsula, which one year supported 10,000 nests.

"I'm just afraid these birds have been pushed to the limit. They've given us enough warnings that they're just ready to up and leave," DiMatteo said.

Threats

A larger, experienced crew can band 2,000 birds of several species within four hours. DiMatteo can limit the impact by starting at sunrise leaving before the adult birds return.

Within the past couple of years, flooded nests and coyote attacks have cut into the Marsh Lake population. Left alone and defenseless while the adults fly up to 50 miles to feed, the young are susceptible to skunks and eagles, too. Adults return by about noon with crayfish, fathead minnows, salamanders and the occasional small bullhead or northern.

The young respond to threats by regurgitating.

Piles of bright-orange crayfish and slews of minnows contrasted with the whitewashed earth — and seemed to disprove pelican-haters' belief that the birds prey heavily on game fish. Pelicans are shallow divers, scooping up what they can in their large bills.

On this July 18 trip, DiMatteo and John E. Wollenberg, WMA assistant manager, expected to find the chicks at the center of Eight-Acre Island, shaded by 6-foot-tall marsh elder. They walked through the weeds to round up a few batches of birds.

But most pelicans congregated near the water. The reason soon dashed by: A coyote. The marks on dead birds showed it was killing not for food, but for fun.

Wollenberg switched tactics, sneaking around to the boat and attempting to turn the birds inland from the water. The move was successful, rounding up enough of the rattled birds to finish the banding.

Monitoring diseases

Pelicans were first documented at Marsh Lake in 1968. Banding started in 1972, with the late St. Cloud State biology professor Al Grewe; it's continued every year since. Most recently, DiMatteo has funded the excursions, as Grewe did before him.

DiMatteo said more than 55,000 pelicans have been banded at Marsh Lake since 1972. Almost 35 percent of all pelicans banded in North America came from Marsh Lake. Three or four of every 100 bands are found and reported.

"Marsh Lake probably has the longest continuing span of banding that I know of," King said.

While King focuses on minimizing human-wildlife conflicts, he sees value in learning about the birds' life history.

"Everyone knows that a white pelican is, but we don't even know for sure when they breed for the first time," King said.

DiMatteo, 57, of Bemidji, has worked as a DNR bird bander and is now finishing a doctorate in zoology at North Dakota State University with a dissertation on pelicans.

A week after the mid-July banding, he planned to return to a different island for a carcass count. He'll euthanize sick birds, stick them in a cooler and send them to USGS' National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

Test results give researchers an idea of what's killing the birds, allowing them to track outbreaks and colonies' health.

Newcastle disease got attention during the 1992 outbreak because of its potential to spread to domestic poultry. It's not been isolated in pelicans.

"Then we realized, hey, we'd better be paying more attention to this, otherwise it's kind of out of sight and out of mind," Wollenberg said.

Every year, up to 25 percent of Marsh Lake's pelican chicks that survive the critical first three weeks later die of West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. That threat arrived in 2002; aerial photography started in 2003.

Today, other agencies' interests in the site include avian influenza, botulism, climate change and effects of the Gulf oil spill. DiMatteo worries that increased human pressure from groups visiting at different times may prompt the birds to leave.

"They are truly bioindicators of the landscape. If something's happening on the landscape, it's going to show in those birds," said Alisa Bartos, biological science technician with USGS' Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center. "It's important to understand what's happening in a colony that's so large, so susceptible to disease."

LOCAL VIEWING: For a glimpse of pelicans — and egrets, great blue herons and cormorants — close to St. Cloud, Jeff DiMatteo recommends the overpass at Pigeon Lake. At Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area, John E. Wollenberg recommends viewing adults from below the Marsh Lake or Lac Qui Parle dams.

BAND SIGHTING: The cattle eartags DiMatteo uses to band pelicans' wings repeat the last three numbers of the leg band. If you spot one, either on a live bird through a viewing scope or on a dead bird (they sometimes turn up near dams), contact the U.S. Geological Survey's Maryland-based Bird Banding Laboratory, www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBl/.

NO SHOOTING: In the U.S., it's illegal to shoot an American white pelican. The birds migrate to spots around the Gulf Coast. Once they leave the U.S., they become a potential food source. Seeing what he has of pelicans, DiMatteo said he'd never eat one.

DEPARTING FLIGHTS: Most first-year pelicans begin to leave the colony in August. By September, about 1,000 remain. If you see a pelican at Marsh Lake in October, Wollenberg said, something's wrong.

INVISIBLE NESTS: By mid-July, little evidence of nests remained. Earlier in the season, one might see the bowl-shaped nests on the ground, woven out of marsh grass. While the nest gets trampled, chicks return to the site because that's where the adults return to feed the young.

EXTREME RIVALRY: One of the two chicks that hatch is usually dead within the week. "You watch these guys in the nest, one of them is always beating the crap out of the other one," Wollenberg said. If predators or disease don't get them, young chicks could die of exposure if the weather turns unseasonably wet or cool.

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Christine Kleven concentrates on banding a young pelican while surrounded by many more pelicans at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

Jeff DiMatteo releases a newly-banded pelican at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18. DiMatteo and other volunteers banded about 350 young pelicans that day.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

Cal Gunnink, John Wellenberg, Jeff DiMatteo and Jordan Swart gather before starting their work of banding pelicans at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

Jeff DiMatteo pulls a small boat to the shore of a small island and wildlife sanctuary at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18. DiMatteo was part of a group on the island to tag pelicans .DiMatteo, of Bemidji, is earning his phD in zoology from NDSU.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

John Wollenberg tries to move a group of young pelicans so that they can be banded by researchers and volunteers at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

Volunteers and researchers take a short break from banding pelicans on a small island sanctuary at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com

Jeff DiMatteo talks about his work of tagging and researching pelicans while riding in a boat at the Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton Friday, July 18.
Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com